Touhou Spell Bubble

« Coming out of seemingly nowhere, Touhou Spell Bubble is one of the best puzzle games I’ve played all year. The mix of rhythm gameplay and a reimagining of the Bust a Move formula is wrapped up in a Touhou presentation, and it’s an addictively fun experience that diehard Touhou fans should definitely check out. »

« The highly competitive puzzle action of Touhou Spell Bubble is exciting stuff that cleverly incorporates rhythm gameplay and a satisfying layer of strategy. If you enjoy these kinds of games then you'll certainly have a blast with what this adorable puzzler has to offer. »

« Touhou Spell Bubble is a top-notch puzzler with a ton of content to enjoy. The wonky localisation is a little disappointing, especially from a well-established company like Taito, but ultimately it doesn’t hurt the experience to a significant degree – the mechanics are the real star here. »

« Touhou Spell Bubble is something special. I’d call it the best Touhou Project spin-off to be localized and one of the best Puzzle Bubble games in years. I do wish it included some Side Stories at the outset and some elements are intimidating. However, it’s so unusual and unique. I can’t say I’ve played any puzzle game like it. It definitely is the sort of title a person might have to see to understand and the price could be off-putting, but I’ve been lowkey obsessed with it and its formula for a week and love how it works. »

« Despite entering a crowded genre on the Nintendo Switch, Touhou Spell Bubble stands out above most for a brilliant audio collection, and unique addictive take on the classic Puzzle Bobble system. A lack of online support, bar the downloadable song packs, is a shame, but for local one-on-one, and an enjoyable solo endeavour, this nails that essential feel of "easy to learn, hard to master." »

« TOUHOU Spell Bubble blends the familiar Puzzle Bobble mechanics with cleverly fun rhythm gameplay set to the beat of Touhou Project’s absolute bangers. And with the new update’s inclusion of online functionality in both ranked and private modes, this already addicting multiplayer puzzler just got a whole lot more exciting. If you’re looking for that instantly enjoyable Puzzle Bobble fun with a fresh new rhythm feel, TOUHOU Spell Bubble is waiting to work its magic on you. »

« Touhou Spell Bubble is a clever and challenging game that combines bubble popping mechanics with rhythm elements and surprisingly intricate strategies. The price may be high, but it’ll pay off if you’re able to stick with it—especially if you can squeeze extra life out of local multiplayer instead of having to rely on the DLC purchases. »

« There are three to four hours of gameplay within the main campaign, with an additional story afterward. So, in addition to wanting to learn about Touhou, it would be advisable to have a friend who would enjoy duking it out with you, lest the game collects dust once the story is over. Overall, Touhou Spell Bubble aims for a specific demographic and does that very well. »

« I think the way of how the game combines puzzle and rhythm is genius, and it makes a safe choice for a casual gaming session for when I want to take a break from other more story heavy games. The songs are nice and addictive, and the gameplay challenging! Definitely a recommendation. »

« This is really only for people who like Bubble Popper puzzle games. Other than that, a better puzzle game would be Catherine by Atlus. »

« I wanted to like this game a lot more but the ai honestly ruins the game for me. The gameplay is good, there is a wide selection of music but the game is hampered by the poorly designed ai. There is just no balance either you play in lower difficulties like normal or easy and you can beat the ai in your sleep or you play hard or lunatic and the ai wins 9 times out of ten. It feels like the game is missing some difficulty in between medium and hard. If the game had multiplayer and match making it could be forgiven but since the entire game is you playing against the computer it really hurts the experience. »

« A surprisingly fun and engaging mix of bobble popper and rhythm games, with a lot of the most iconic Touhou songs on the internet for the last 20 years. Comes with a decent roster size and an enjoyable story mode. »

« Fantastic take on the original puzzle bobble. Such a fun game. OK first of all the price is a bit steep, I think this is down to licensing for the music in the game (which is great) but my first thought was "there is no way I'm paying this much for puzzle bobble" but I downloaded the demo anyway and had a lot of fun so I decided to buy the full game, I think it's worth it. Challenge: you play against the CPU or other players, there is plenty of challenge here but it also has an easy mode and plenty of configuration options so you can tune the game how you like. The game is very simple, easy to learn, difficult to master. The story mode walks you nicely through how to play and there is further info in the help menu to teach you the mechanics but for the most part you can just pick up a controller and play. The story is very lighthearted and typical silly humour for these types of games. Main Story Mode serves to teach you how to play with progressively difficult challenges as you work your way towards entering a tournament. You can change the difficulty here as you see fit. There is a Side Story mode which I'm assuming will come later as DLC. Vs. CPU mode allows you to choose your own difficulty, song choice, rules etc to practice the game. Challenge mode allows you to battle the CPU controlled players in a large series of challenges of various difficulty rated 1-10, further challenges can be purchased in the DLC packs. Battle mode allows local multiplayer games which you can configure handicaps and other rules for a two player game. After each battle you are awarded coins to spend in the "Kourindou" to buy more songs and battle cards. Songs are 1000 coins and battle cards are between 500 and 1000 coins each. After each battle you get around 300 coins so it isn't a total grind to unlock all the cards and songs. Gallery allows you to view each characters abilities and spell cards, and listen to the music from the game. A nice feature in the game options is to allow for lag compensation, for example if you are playing on a TV with lag in the sound or image you can configure the game to compensate for it. Overall a lot of fun, I've never played any of the Touhou games and I'm not that fussed about the characters in the game, but the music and gameplay is fun and I will get plenty of hours of enjoyment from this game both in solo play and multiplayer. A solid recommendation from me. I would have rated this a 10 if it had a well executed online multiplayer, even at this price. »